New forms and instructions

Grade the news yourself

News is democracy’s most essential commodity. Here's a way to perform your own simple consumer report.

Get your printable news scorecard here (PDF)

Get your instruction sheet here (PDF)

Guiding principles

The primary purpose of socially responsible journalism is to help as many people as possible make sense of the issues and events happening in the world around them. News makes informed choices possible: How to improve the quality of life -- be it environment, schools, jobs, transportation, housing, health, etc.

In journalism, entertainment should serve information. Making the important interesting is the journalist's challenge. What's merely interesting may add spice. But when spice becomes the main course, self-government chokes.

Ground rules

• Make it easy on yourself: Tape the newscast to slow it down for analysis.
• Rate the media on their best work. Skip stories shorter than 20 seconds and articles fewer than five inches of text deep (don't include headlines). Also, only judge their top stories -- the front page and local news display page in newspapers. TV only has time for top stories, so tape the entire newscast.

Pick your favorite newspaper or newscast. One day is good. An enterprising newsroom never has a "slow news day" because the public's enduring questions dictate stories, not events. Further, most newsrooms have minimum standards of quality applied every day. Still, two or more days are better.

P.S. Make it a social event; grade with friends.

If you'd prefer to use the older forms, click here for the scorecard and here for the instructions.

What do you think? Discuss it in The Coffeehouse.

What do you think? Discuss it in The Coffeehouse.

This site is supported and maintained by the Grade the News project team.

Feel free to disseminate, but please attribute and link to us.